


Red Death

by flinch3d



Category: Saw (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-28 02:15:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20418230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flinch3d/pseuds/flinch3d
Summary: In the beginning Detective Mark Hoffman sought to put away killers. Then tragedy made him one.A story that follows Hoffman's journey from homicide detective to Jigsaw apprentice.





	Red Death

Ransom's first thoughts upon awaking in darkness were of confusion. He realized groggily that he was not home, for the damp, hard floor beneath him felt nothing like the familiar cycle of regaining consciousness to find himself splayed across his sheetless mattress or atop the ripped up-sofa in his living room with the stained cushions so tattered and thin that the coil springs poked through to stab at his back. A series of mistakes had surely been made for him to wind up in such peculiar surroundings, but Ransom remembered none of them. He sensed something encircling his throat, and suddenly the fog in his mind parted to reveal a frightening thought: perhaps he was not alone here in the pitch-black unknown. Panicked, he grasped wildly at his neck with one hand while swinging blindly with the other to fend off any unseen aggressor; though his fist connected only with air, his scrambling fingers landed on what felt like a leather collar.

“What the fuck?” Ransom shrieked, far too unnerved to stop the shrill edge of terror from cracking into his voice. “What the fuck is this?”

He fumbled about blindly until his hand grazed across something plastic and smooth. He hesitated, uncertain whether he should touch an object he could not see; but his only other option was to lie inactive and vulnerable, waiting motionless for either something to occur or for someone—likely his abductor—to arrive, and if neither were to happen then perhaps Ransom would never be found and it would be only a matter of time before he succumbed to a slow, isolated fate. Few objects could be more loathsome than such an outcome, and so he grabbed the thing—whatever it may be—and sat up to inspect it.

There was a tug at the back of his neck, followed by what sounded like a pin being pulled free from its grenade. A fluorescent bulb flickered on above his head to provide just enough light to reveal two glass cases: one that appeared to hold several bottles of water and an assortment of food items, and one that contained only a single unlabeled medicine bottle. The red digital numbers of a timer began their ominous countdown.

**06 : 23 : 59 : 59**

**06 : 23 : 59 : 58**

**06 : 23 : 59 : 57**

Ransom's stomach sank like cement.

No. _No._

Terrified, he looked down to confirm what he already knew to be true: the object in his hand was a tape recorder.

Heart pounding with such violence that he felt as if it would erupt from his chest, Ransom pressed the play button. A garbled voice spoke.

“_Hello, Ransom. I want to play a game. For years, you have abused your body with prescription drugs—first by lying to get what you wanted, then by stealing medication from those who really needed it. You added to the suffering of people who were already in pain, just so you could satiate your own selfish desires. Today, I offer you the chance to free yourself from the greed that rules your every move. Of the two glass boxes before you, one contains enough food and water to sustain you for a week, while the other holds several of the pills you have repeatedly been shown to value above human life. The door to this room is bolted shut and will only unlock after the timer has run out. It can take up to three weeks to succumb to starvation, but death from thirst incurs in a matter of days. Will you choose what nourishes your body, or what feeds your habit? Heed my warning, Ransom: once you have opened one box, the other will be closed to you forever. Make your decision.” _

The tape player slid from Ransom's sweaty grasp to land at his feet with a noise he did not hear, for in that moment nothing existed to him—not the wet scent of mildew lingering thickly in the stale air to assail his nostrils, not the bulb whose light faded in and out as if to taunt him with the horrifying prospect of a week spent in complete darkness, not the four grimy walls that smothered him inside their foul embrace and threatened to never, ever let him go—except the stream of images surging through his memory with hideous clarity.

Ransom standing in an alley across the street from a pharmacy, his fists shoved into his jacket pockets and the cold night biting at his unshaved face and his foot tapping rapidly on the concrete with an impatience known only to those inching ever closer towards the throes of withdrawals. Ransom tightening his grip on an old woman's arm, his eyes narrowed with a steely glint and hers wide with the confusion and fear of an animal who has just seen the hunter step out from behind a tree to lower his rifle. Ransom emptying the contents of a prescription bottle into the palm of his hand before slamming them all into his mouth with a fast gulp that disgusted even himself, his breathing still jagged from his run as he'd fled the spindly little woman and her wailing when her brittle bones met the pavement with a nauseating _crack_.

There had been remorse later on, shame over what he had done. But then the pills had worn off and the gnawing need for more had returned as it always did, and so Ransom found himself in another alley in another town, the neon glow of a pharmacy sign calling out to him like a beacon to a ship. He went on to commit his crime again, and again, and again, more times than he cared to count, and had he not awoken in these begrimed confines Ransom likely would have ventured out that very night. But he didn't deserve to be _here_, didn't deserve _this_—he'd seen the Jigsaw reports on the news, and he was nothing like those who'd been strung up and forced to mutilate themselves as penance for their respective atrocities. He wasn't a rapist, or a wife-beater, or a corrupt official or even an ex-con: he was just a man with a chemical hunger that controlled every fiber of his being until it was fed. He didn't feel good about what he did, but he wasn't _really_ a bad person—they could go and get new prescriptions, couldn't they? It was easy enough for _them_. They didn't have the red flags he'd been so unjustly papered with. And if they happened to stick their prescription into their purses and he had to grab it too—well, that was just collateral damage, wasn't it? He couldn't just go and give it back; they'd have him arrested on the spot, and the whole thing would have been for nothing.

_Make your decision._

_Make your decision._

_Make your decision._

The words rang in his ears, piercing his brain. This was a nightmare. It had to be! He pounded his fists uselessly against the cast-iron door, screaming for a rescuer even long after it became clear one would never arrive, until his throat felt raw and he collapsed onto the floor in defeat. “I'm sorry!” Ransom sobbed, hoping that his captor would hear his cries. Someone had to be listening. Watching. His eyes scoured the darkness for any sign of a camera. What was the point of locking him in here if they couldn't witness his suffering?

“I'm so fucking sorry! Please, I—I'll never do it again, I swear, if you just let me go! _Please!_”

But there was only silence.

Weeping hours passed by at a tortuous crawl, and when he thought he had no more tears to shed Ransom lifted his gaze to the timer and realized that he had been foolish: there was still plenty left to cry.

What felt like an eternity had been less than an hour.

* * *

“_Hello, Ransom. I want to play a game.”_

“_Hello, Ransom. I want to play a game.”_

“_Hello, Ransom. I—“_

Ransom rewound the tape, over and over again, before finally throwing the recorder across the room with a roar of anger.

What decision was there to make? He couldn't waste away in this hellhole. Already his throat had begun to ache from the strain of his worthless screams. He thought of water as cold as ice, of soda bubbling in a glass and froth running over the brim of a beer mug, and suddenly his mouth felt as dry as cotton. At least he wasn't hungry—not yet, anyway. Ransom's last meal was a cheap burger from the joint next to his apartment complex, so greasy that it'd left his fingertips oily when he unwrapped it and took a few disinterested bites before tossing it half-eaten onto the coffee table with one hand while reaching for a prescription bottle with his other.

Hindsight could be cruel.

And there was yet another frightening scenario to consider. He wasn't sure how long he had been unconscious or how much time had passed since his last dose, but if the all-too-familiar pain in his gut and the ache in his limbs were any indication, then the withdrawal symptoms were already beginning to set it.

Ransom had heard stories from his friends—back in the days when he still _had_ friends, before he'd managed to drive every single one away with the ceaseless stream of lies that sprung from his tongue when he badly needed a fix and the profane mouthful of white-hot rage that lashed out at them when his pleas were refused—of unfortunate souls who writhed through the detox cycle on the cold concrete floor of a jail cell, shivering and vomiting and praying to any almighty who would listen for an end to their anguish, with nothing to alleviate the days of suffering to come but a metal toilet and a bed to soak up their sweat. Ransom had scoffed at the notion of allowing oneself to wind up in such a dismal situation and swore it would never happen to him, an irony that did not escape him now. Ransom had robbed to stave off the ever-approaching specter of withdrawals, and it was that very thievery that had led him to this room, this prison, this choice. He'd always known that one day his downward spiral would come to an inevitable final stop, whereupon he would either land shakily on his feet or crash violently onto the ground, but never had he thought it would end like _this_.

He looked at the timer. Six days and twenty-two hours left to go.

He brought his knees to his chest and closed his eyes.

* * *

Ransom remembered an article he'd read once while seated in a waiting room, counting down the minutes until his opportunity to lie or charm or beg his way into another refill, about Jigsaw survivors who claimed that their tormentor had actually been their savior. By placing them in deadly traps the killer known as Jigsaw had, in their own words, “helped” them take back control of their lives. Prior to their abduction they had merely existed after forgetting what it was to truly be alive, drifting aimlessly throughout their empty days and empty nights in either a perpetual state of endless misery or numbly devoid of all emotion entirely, until they became so utterly lost that they chose to simply remain idle and rot away into nothing rather than attempt to find the person they had once been. But their trials empowered within them something that they had believed to be long-dead: an appreciation for life. For _their _life. No longer did they indulge in destructive acts, or waste away in a haze of self-pity, or even take a breath of fresh air without cherishing its value. They didn't just survive: they were _reborn_.

_Well_, Ransom had thought at the time, _that's pretty fucked up. _

But he understood now.

* * *

A strange sort of acceptance was beginning to sink in. Jigsaw had pried open Ransom's eyes to reveal a grotesque truth that he could no longer flinch away from: he had been imprisoned within a trap of his own making long before ever waking up in this room. But when the timer had made its way down to zero and his trial was complete, the door would open and he would be set free from _both_ traps: the one that Jigsaw had created, and the one that had ensnared him in a death grip for so very long and flayed away pieces of his soul until he was nothing more than a hollowed-out, barely-breathing mass of flesh and blood and teeth and hair that had once known laughter and joy. He had never wanted to become a duplicitous husk, consumed by his own appetite like a serpent devouring its tail, who had robbed himself of the ability to care for anything beyond his craving for a euphoria to fill the insatiable black hole inside of him that seemed to grow deeper and deeper with every passing day.

And yeah, along the way some people may have gotten hurt, but Ransom had never wanted that either—and besides, what did it matter now? It was he alone who was now locked inside in this room, he alone who would now pay the price and suffer for his misdeeds. There was little sense in lingering over past transgressions and reminiscing on what could not be undone, even if he wished they had never taken place at all.

And after he lived through this, after he endured the tide of incessant sweat and the merciless stomach pains and the stench of his own waste piling in the corner, he would no longer be known as Ransom the thief, Ransom the hustler, Ransom the no-good rotten liar. Instead he would become Ransom the redeemed, Ransom the brave, Ransom the strong-willed survivor. The pained moans of a frail woman lying fractured on the pavement with blood trickling down her wrinkled forehead, the pillaged remnants of a purse torn away from its owner and left abandoned near a dumpster after being robbed of all valuables, the countless empty prescription bottles with another person's name printed across their starch-white labels in a font so accusingly bold that it seemed to bore into Ransom's brain as he swallowed its contents: gone, forgotten and erased.

He could start over. He could begin anew. All he had to do was—for the first time in years that had dragged on at the excruciatingly-lethargic speed of centuries—make the _right_ decision.

Ransom's stomach growled, and suddenly the key in his hand felt as heavy as iron.

* * *

What decision was there to make? Opening one box would mean surviving the duration of his captivity, while opening the other would result in a slow, agonizing death.

So why hadn't he opened the rations box yet? Why didn't he just ignore the nausea sloshing around in his gut and the slick coat of perspiration making his clothes cling to his skin and the sensation of every bone in his body being reduced to shards of glass that threatened to shatter if he moved so much as an inch, and make his choice?

What was he waiting for?

* * *

Maybe, if he was _really_ careful, he could get both boxes open. Maybe.

No, best not to try. If one could easily circumvent Jigsaw's rules there would be no mangled bodies to display.

* * *

Ransom swung between feverish and freezing, his legs so maddeningly restless that no amount of positioning eased the jittery discomfort; his muscles spasmed, his joints screamed, and his bones were on the verge of snapping into a million splinters of misery. There was nothing more he wanted than to be in his apartment, far away from this monstrous, inhumane room and its monstrous, inhumane choices. Jigsaw was every bit as insane as the papers made him out to be—what kind of psychopath locked a man away in a dark room and left him to suffer and starve? Ransom was a human being, not a neglected pet. He didn't deserve this. No one did.

Was anyone watching him? Would anyone even _see_ if he tried to open them both?

* * *

Ransom vomited into a corner. The dreaded specter he had fought so hard to elude had at last caught up with him. With nowhere to escape to, Ransom could do nothing but press his back against the mildewed walls and tremble helplessly as wave after wave of nausea washed over him. Never before had he known such misery; pain wracked furiously through his nervous system with unforgiving intensity, as if he were being brutalized by his own body, until he crawled away weakly, head throbbing and stomach lurching, to once again heave bile across the floor.

* * *

The day after robbing the old woman, Ransom had looked up to meet her gaze on his television screen. This time there was no blood to redden her silver hair, no grimace of pain to contort her thin mouth; instead she wore a smile so wide and beaming that it made the corners of her sparkling eyes crinkle, each arm draped lovingly over the shoulders of two young men with grins every bit as bright as her own. His heart pounding thunderously in his ears, a dazed Ransom heard only pieces of the report delivered by a particularly grim news anchor.

_Grandmother attacked while picking up prescription for cancer-stricken husband of forty-five years. _

_Acute subdural hematoma. _

_Leaves behind three children, four grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. _

Ransom had felt a sense of guilt that shook him to his core. He still did, during the nights when he didn't have enough pills to help him sleep. He'd risen from the couch, unearthed his stash from his bedside drawer, and flung it into the kitchen garbage can in an act that was more of a performance to assuage his conscience than a sincere attempt at sobriety. It was the closest he ever came to quitting.

He dug the plastic bag out an hour later. Within a week he was in another alley.

Before he could stop himself Ransom drove the key into a lock, pried open the case lid, and swallowed every single pill inside.

Some time later, when his symptoms had ebbed away and he was able to scrape together what remained of his sanity, Ransom made a discovery so bloodcurdling that it cut through the warm haze of his high like a knife: the key had snapped at its head, leaving its cuts wedged deeply inside of the lock.

No! _No! _

He scrambled to where he had thrown the tape recorder before grabbing hold of it with fumbling hands and fast-forwarding to Jigsaw's caution.

“_Heed my warning, Ransom: once you have opened one box, the other will be closed to you forever.”_

The words that had before sounded so vague and somehow circumventable now felt like a weight pressing on his chest, harder and harder, crushing his lungs and bursting his organs and robbing him of the ability to breath.

It was not Jigsaw who would be the death of Ransom—it was Ransom himself.

Panic led him to insert his fingernails into the lock's keyhole in a vain attempt to retrieve the broken key, until they too began to bend and break apart down to the soft flesh of his fingertips. Panic led him to kick the box containing the rations with as much force as he could muster, and when his ankle rolled across the immovable surface with a sickening_ crunch_ that made him howl in pain Ransom switched to his other foot, then his fists, then his elbows. And it was panic that led Ransom to bang his own forehead against the glass in a final act of desperation, over and over again, until his vision had become so blurry that he could hardly see and his skin had split open to leave behind a smeared trail of blood.

But the glass would not budge, no matter how hard he sobbed and pleaded and prayed, and as he collapsed onto the floor in defeat and let out the anguished scream of a man who he has just delivered unto himself his own demise Ransom felt the pangs of fatal thirst begin to sink its claws into his throat.

* * *

“Jesus, it _stinks _in here,” said a cop with such revulsion that it bordered on awe, holding a handkerchief to his face to shield his nose and mouth from the stench of rot and body fluids and whatever other horrors seeped from Ransom's decomposing corpse.

“Well,” shrugged his partner, a combat veteran with a far stronger stomach, “what do you expect? You stick someone in an empty room and bolt it shut for God knows how long, of course it's gonna fucking reek when you open it back up.”

The glow of his flashlight traveled across the room to illuminate a tape recorder lying on the filthy ground, a medicine bottle and its removed cap, and two glass cases: one open and empty, and the other closed and filled with bottled water and an assortment of food items that were in visible stages of spoilage and furry with mold. A large timer perched on the wall glowed with eight red digits.

**00 : 00 : 00 : 00**

“You don't think...” The rookie's voice trailed off and his face blanched to a shade of sickly-green, his eyes widening with horrified realization above the handkerchief.

“Get out of here if you're gonna be sick,” the more seasoned officer snapped. “Last thing I need is you contaminating the scene.” But when the flashlight shone on a death-bloated thigh to reveal Jigsaw's signature puzzle carving, his own stomach jolted with a sudden surge of fear that he hadn't felt since the days when he still wore army fatigues.

“_Shit_,” he swore, and turned to face his pale comrade. “Get Detective Hoffman on the phone.”


End file.
